Rumours abounded throughout the first world war that the German army operated ‘corpse factories’ – Kadaververwertungsanstalten – in which the bodies of their soldiers were rendered down for fat, a scarcity in Germany due to the British naval blockade. The story ran in the British press in 1917, although not in the Manchester Guardian.

In 1925 Conservative MP John Charteris revealed that, as head of the British propaganda department, he had fabricated the story and dispatched it to China in an attempt to win new allies in the war (though he denied it when reports appeared in the press). It appears the department deliberately mistranslated the German ‘Kadaver’, well aware it meant animal carcass and not corpse.

NEW YORK, SATURDAY.Brigadier General Charteris, M.P., before sailing for England to-day, informed Reuter’s correspondent that his remarks at a private dinner of the National Arts Club concerning the alleged existence during the war of a German factory for utilising human corpses had been incorrectly reported. His references to propaganda, which were purely incidental, had, he said, been made for the express purpose of emphasising the principle followed by the British that propaganda, to be effective, must be based on truth.

General Charteris added that he had only mentioned the case of the alleged “corpse factory” for the purpose of emphasising that this report was not utilised for propaganda when it became known that the soldier’s diary upon which it was founded was fictitious. He admitted, however, that the report might have had a temporary effect.

GENERAL CHARTERIS’S CABLE TO A FRIEND.

In a cable to a friend with whom he is closely associated politically, Brigadier General Charteris says:

Suspend judgment for the present. Did not say all credited me, nor does what I said bear the construction some people put on it.

THE CONTESTED SPEECH.

A “Times” telegram last week reported General Charteris as having said that the corpse story began as propaganda for China. By transposing the caption from one of two photographs found on German prisoners to the other he gave the impression that the Germans were making a dreadful use of the bodies of their own dead soldiers. This photograph he sent to a Chinese newspaper in Shanghai. He told the familiar story of its later republication in England and of the discussion it created there. Later, said General Charteris, in order to support the story, what purported to be the diary of a German soldier was forged in his office. It was planned to have this discovered on a dead German by a war correspondent with a passion for German diaries, but the plan was never carried out. The diary was now in the War Museum in London.

Several members of the House of Commons have privately expressed their determination to raise the matter when Parliament reassembles next month.

SOME OPINIONS ON THE STORY.

The following opinions on the German “Corpse Factory” story have been given by the prominent politicians named:—

Mr. D. Lloyd George.The story came under my notice in various ways at the time. I did not believe them; I do not believe it now. It was never adopted as part of the armoury of the British Propaganda Department. It was in fact “turned down” by that department.

Mr. C. F. G. Masterman.We certainly did not accept the story as true, and I know nobody in official positions at the time who credited it. Nothing suspect as this was made use of in our propaganda. Only such information as had been properly verified was circulated.

Mr. Ian Macpherson.I was at the War Office at the time. We had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the story when it came through. It was supported by the captured divisional orders of the German army in France and I have an impression it was also backed up by the Foreign Office on the strength of extracts from the German press. We did not know it had been invented by anybody, and had we known there was the slightest doubt about the truth of the story it would not have been used in any way by us.

It is pure hypocrisy to attempt the suggestion that General Charteris introduced an element of falsehood and detraction into a truth-loving war-world. War is an orgy of lying... as soon as a man believes that by circulating lies he can bring victory nearer, he will lie till he is black in the face, and it is humbug to affect surprise or indignation at the fact.